The financial industry is the lifeblood of a free market economy. Financial institutions, such as corporate banks, for example, enable the purchasing power of consumers by extending and/or servicing loans and lease arrangements, for example, entered into by the consumers. In particular, such institutions provide loans to enable consumers to purchase real estate. Under certain circumstances, however, various consumers may not meet their financial obligations under such loans. When a mortgage loan account of a consumer becomes delinquent, for example, it may become necessary for the financial institution to pursue one or more collection and recovery activities.
Collection and recovery efforts may implicate a host of scenarios in addition to delinquency situations. For instance, a consumer may wish to initiate an EFT (electronic funds transfer) payment of an obligation with the financial institution as a regular payment (i.e., a payment that is not made as a past due payment) under a real estate loan arrangement. Furthermore, when a consumer dies, action may need to be taken by the financial institution to preserve the rights of the institution under, for instance, a mortgage arrangement previously executed with the decedent prior to his death.
A variety of narrowly focused computer systems have been developed in the art by different parties to store and/or manage information associated with different, limited aspects of collection and recovery efforts. However, no existing systems cover a substantial portion of the collection and recovery process. Instead, in conventional practice, a collection and recovery agent typically must deal with a multitude of incompatible legacy computer systems. Often the agent must access each of these legacy systems through a variety of different computer systems. In addition, the agent usually must perform a number of burdensome manual tasks in association with collection and recovery efforts without the convenience of computerization and/or automation. It can be seen that the operation of existing systems can increase operational costs and may adversely impact the effectiveness and efficiency of customer service efforts of the financial institution.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that existing systems for performing collections and recovery operations generally are not user-friendly; are inefficient and time-consuming; are not truly paperless or near paperless systems; require redundant data entry; are difficult to administer and modify or enhance; and often are incompatible with other computer systems. Using these existing systems, a financial institution cannot readily achieve an adequate level of customer service in an efficient and cost-effective manner.